The Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Community => Topic started by: anounceofsaltperday on August 14, 2014, 02:15:20 AM
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This debate is easy to resolve. A camera, suitably set up in a frame to maintain horizontal line of sight, is sent up in a weather balloon. If the earth is an oblate spheroid then the horizon will appear lower in the frame. If the horizon maintains the same position in the camera (as I have no doubt that it will, because it does when I fly), then the world in unambiguously flat.
I look forward to the troll responses about why we can't do this simple experiment.
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Why is this in S&AS? It belongs in FEG or FED.
Anyway, I assume you're about to post a link to one of the countless videos in which this exact thing happens. Trust me, we've had this discussion before. I tried to search the old site for a thread about this very subject so we wouldn't have to rehash it, but I accidentally crashed the forum in the attempt. Oops. Side note: god that website is terrible. I had forgotten how bad it really was.
The response generally involves distortion from the camera lens (if you look carefully in most of those videos, you'll see times when the horizon actually looks concave. Unless you believe in Flexible Earth Theory, that pretty clearly discounts them as evidence), lack of actual curvature (a circle of light is exactly what you'd expect to see on a flat Earth, and many videos fail to demonstrate curvature on the axes requires to prove RET), and the occasional Electromagnetic Acceleration theorist.
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Wait. Did you make this thread twice? You could have just asked a mod to move it.
Also, there's no need to start making George Scott Fallacies. If we're trolls, and we aren't, why are you even here?
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If the horizon maintains the same position in the camera (as I have no doubt that it will, because it does when I fly), then the world in unambiguously flat..
Do you have any evidence that suggests you've ever flown a plane or launched a weather balloon?
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Usual avoidance strategy... what about comments on the idea?
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Usual avoidance strategy... what about comments on the idea?
Coming from the person who just avoided my question...
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quite obviously proving or otherwise that I am a trainee pilot is TOTALLY irrelevant to the proposed experiment. The correctness of the experiment is the subject of the post.
And you are using obfuscation, as predicted in the original post and a red herring.
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I have seen the infamous video of the guy going up in a balloon capsule for the big parachute jump. There are a couple of frames taken as he is getting out of the door where the horizon shows clearly that the earth is flat. All the other pics have a ludicrous fish eye distortion.
A normal camera protected from the cold with a suitable gyroscope mechanism is all that is required. Photos taken from a level position will show that the horizon does not alter from its position in the central area of the photograph if the earth is flat. If the earth is shaped as we are told it is, then the horizon will drop lower in the frame as the balloon gains altitude.
Lens distortion is simply NOT relevant.
This is the simplest experiment to do. Lets work out a way to get it done...
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I am not sure why the horizon would remain low on a RE. It sounds like you are assuming the distance to the horizon is the same, no matter the elevation even though it can be shown mathematically that the horizon would get further away as elevation increases.
I may have misunderstood what you are saying, please let me know if I have.
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I am not sure why the horizon would remain low on a RE. It sounds like you are assuming the distance to the horizon is the same, no matter the elevation even though it can be shown mathematically that the horizon would get further away as elevation increases.
I may have misunderstood what you are saying, please let me know if I have.
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I am not sure why the horizon would remain low on a RE. It sounds like you are assuming the distance to the horizon is the same, no matter the elevation even though it can be shown mathematically that the horizon would get further away as elevation increases.
I may have misunderstood what you are saying, please let me know if I have.
Reference to article for the "dip" on RE: http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/atmos_refr/dip.html (http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/atmos_refr/dip.html),
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUrUrWmmaA
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Declination
Altitude (ft) Altitude (m) degrees
5 1.5 0.040
1600 487.6 0.709
10000 3048.0 1.772
100000 30480.0 5.605
This is the declination from horizontal expected from a weather balloon at various heights, IF THE EARTH is an oblate spheroid. At 100,000' atmospheric refraction effects will be negligible.
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Why is this in S&AS? It belongs in FEG or FED.
Agreed. Merged with the duplicate and left in FEG.
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Gulliver, thank you for finding that "dip of the horizon" calculator. I haven't seen that before.
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Gulliver, thank you for finding that "dip of the horizon" calculator. I haven't seen that before.
You're welcome. Given that any person with the calculator, a sextant, and a tall building on a bay can experimentally determine that the Earth is not flat, it's often ignored here in the forums.
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tell me more Gulliver. I live on Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne Australia... I have only observed the same result as the Bedford canal... What have you observed?
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and for a tall building on the bay, refraction would complicate any sextant reading to the point of doubt. In my view, only a rigorously performed weather balloon experiment would settle this. No mining survey takes account of earth curvature, nor any civil projects such as the Delaware, Paijanne or Dahuofang aqueducts.
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and for a tall building on the bay, refraction would complicate any sextant reading to the point of doubt. In my view, only a rigorously performed weather balloon experiment would settle this. No mining survey takes account of earth curvature, nor any civil projects such as the Delaware, Paijanne or Dahuofang aqueducts.
You're asking questions that demonstrate to me your critical thinking. I suspect you have some real talent.
There's a lot to say for fully answer the "tall building" experiment. You really need to combine a second type of observation, disappearing hulls first of ship going to sea, or maybe the sunset time by floor if the building has windows looking westward to the horizon over the bay. (Otherwise, FEers invoke special pleading about the "magic" nature of sunlight's limited travel distance through an atmosphere ("atmolayer").
Regarding refraction, I agree that it makes for variances in the experimental results--but just in a numerical sense. Refraction favors longer distances, and longer distances favors RET. So refraction limits your experiment's repeatability , but not that the predicted difference between the two theories exists.
Next, and I love this question: can we quickly dismiss FET with a personal experiment with a helium balloon and a camera? Yes, and in deed, it's easy and inexpensive. First, the standard middle-school-level experiment that you'll see on youtube regularly shows a curvature. RET predicts this curvature. FET tries to hold on with some special pleading: That's just the curvature of the Sun's illumination on the Earth's surface. Tom Bishop even once argues that you could squint your eyes to make out distance countries in some examples. So, you'd need to add another constraint to break the special pleading. (Of course, the Sun illumination is not a circular except on the first days of summer and winter. On the equinoxes it's a straight line.)
Launch the balloon an hour before sunrise or after sunset. The launchpad will be in darkness. The balloon will rise into the sunlight and be able to see the terminus. The terminus will be curved. RET predicts that. FET can't handle it. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctcaP2kRq_I
So for about $1000 any FEer can prove FET false without any concern about the Conspiracy's interference. Or they could just vet the video I linked as an example and give up now.
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and for a tall building on the bay, refraction would complicate any sextant reading to the point of doubt. In my view, only a rigorously performed weather balloon experiment would settle this. No mining survey takes account of earth curvature, nor any civil projects such as the Delaware, Paijanne or Dahuofang aqueducts.
There are government geodetic surveys. Here is a link to the Canadian webpage about it:
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/geomatics/geodetic-reference-systems/10781
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Once again, Gulliver, I am indebted to you for providing this excellent video. To my amusement I continue to be surprised by the frequency with which two people can receive exactly the same data and draw completely different conclusions.
I took several screens shots of this video and found that the horizon is in the middle of the photo and that we do not observe a declination of 5-6o as we would expect if the earth was an oblate spheroid (that model hereafter called the OSM). When the camera is pointed up the horizon curves as expected by OSM, when the camera points down the horizon curves the opposite way, and quite regularly we obtain frames of a flat horizon. We know that all camera lenses are compound spherical shapes and without making any confirming checks, I expect the Go Pro to share this characteristic. Without the optical mathematics to map pixels correctly, and without any knowledge of the plane which the camera is on, our ability to make judgements about the true shape of the earth from these images is ambiguous at best. For me, the lack of declination in many of the shots gives me sufficient encouragement to return to my original post i.e. lets perform the weather balloon experiment with camera equipped surveying equipment suitably mounted to establish the declination of the horizon. We also need to establish the height of the equipment, presumably using GPS.
With regard to Rama Set's comments, I am fully aware of the multiplicity of Geoid models, including the confusion as to whether they are gravimetric, sea level based, magnetic etc etc ad nauseum. The unambiguous point that I am making is that the are NO REAL WORLD applications of these models to any large scale mining or civil engineering projects such as mines, tunnels, railroads or bridges to compensate for the substantial differences of several metres in RL over the distances involved in these projects. Moreover, even the British Ordnance Survey continues to use the Geoid established in the 1800's rather than any later geoids because it is more accurate by a significant amount (without checking up to 80cm by memory) than the accepted international Geoid for Great Britain. My further understanding is that the application of corrections to standard civil surveys to account for the earths curvature is against the law in the UK, as discussed in Samual Rowbothams book.
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I took several screens shots of this video and found that the horizon is in the middle of the photo and that we do not observe a declination of 5-6o as we would expect if the earth was an oblate spheroid (that model hereafter called the OSM). When the camera is pointed up the horizon curves as expected by OSM, when the camera points down the horizon curves the opposite way, and quite regularly we obtain frames of a flat horizon. We know that all camera lenses are compound spherical shapes and without making any confirming checks, I expect the Go Pro to share this characteristic. Without the optical mathematics to map pixels correctly, and without any knowledge of the plane which the camera is on, our ability to make judgements about the true shape of the earth from these images is ambiguous at best. For me, the lack of declination in many of the shots gives me sufficient encouragement to return to my original post i.e. lets perform the weather balloon experiment with camera equipped surveying equipment suitably mounted to establish the declination of the horizon. We also need to establish the height of the equipment, presumably using GPS.
Please show your work and I'll be glad to assist, in particular, examples showing your claim "when the camera points down the horizon curves the opposite way"
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camera pointed up, earth curved up... hmmm about the logical spoonerism
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camera pointed up, earth curved up... hmmm about the logical spoonerism
Where do you see "earth curved up". Surely you don't think clouds are "earth", do you?
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these clouds are conforming aren't they? the horizon is still the horizon. Once again, the unambiguous point is that the weather balloon experiment requires properly designed surveying instrumentation. It is a little scary knowing that the answer awaits us for so little effort... but egg sighting as well. Join me Gulliver, you have as much interest as me in resolving this matter. Assist me to get this experiment done and the results distributed.
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these clouds are conforming aren't they? the horizon is still the horizon. Once again, the unambiguous point is that the weather balloon experiment requires properly designed surveying instrumentation. It is a little scary knowing that the answer awaits us for so little effort... but egg sighting as well. Join me Gulliver, you have as much interest as me in resolving this matter. Assist me to get this experiment done and the results distributed.
Oh dear, how sad. No, the horizon is not the astronomical horizon. No, I don't need to perform an experiment, but feel free to design and run one yourself. All the best.
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Gulliver, you are pretending to have some superior knowledge to belittle me? Then let the reader of this repartee make their own decisions. What is unambiguously clear is that at an altitude of 100,000' the declination to the horizon has to be more than 5 degrees to be consistent with the OSM of the earth. If the earth is flat, the declination will be very close to nil. Good luck with baffling the other readers with your superiority.
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Gulliver, you are pretending to have some superior knowledge to belittle me?
That's his general modus operandi, yes.
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Gulliver, you are pretending to have some superior knowledge to belittle me? Then let the reader of this repartee make their own decisions. What is unambiguously clear is that at an altitude of 100,000' the declination to the horizon has to be more than 5 degrees to be consistent with the OSM of the earth. If the earth is flat, the declination will be very close to nil. Good luck with baffling the other readers with your superiority.
I made no such claim.
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It is a lot easier to measure the non-curvature of water than the horizon. On a sphere or sphere-like object, nearly everything is curved (straight lines do not exist on a perfect sphere). Thus if the Earth were round water over X distance would be curved (it isn't).
As an additional fun fact, it is hypothesized that ancient Egyptians utilized water's complete and utter flatness to aid in building the pyramids. They filled sections of rock with water and used the water level as a guide for the foundation of the main structure.
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It is a lot easier to measure the non-curvature of water than the horizon. On a sphere or sphere-like object, nearly everything is curved (straight lines do not exist on a perfect sphere). Thus if the Earth were round water over X distance would be curved (it isn't).
As an additional fun fact, it is hypothesized that ancient Egyptians utilized water's complete and utter flatness to aid in building the pyramids. They filled sections of rock with water and used the water level as a guide for the foundation of the main structure.
Hi Irushwithscvs, glad to see you chipped in on this topic. I have made several observations of non curvature at Port Philip Bay in Victoria, Australia... more or less the same experiment as the Bedford Canal experiment with the same outcome. Nonetheless, the principle of the experiment proposed in this thread is to obviate the need to make allowance for lenses etc and look strictly for the declination of the horizon using appropriate surveying equipment from a horizontal datum at approximately 100,000'. If the earth conforms to OSM, we expect the declination of the horizon to be close to six degrees.. no ifs or buts.
I would be grateful if you would put up a comment in support of this proposal and help keep this thread maintained on this very narrowly focused aspect of unambiguous proof of FEM or OSM.
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Hi Guys,
I'm new here. I'll be honest with you, I do not believe that the earth is a disc in space. I have read about a kid that strapped a camera to a weather balloon and took pictures from the "edge" of space. It really doesn't seem that difficult. Also the required equipment is not that expensive, in fact some might argue that using a high end camera might have a wide angle lens that would distort the flatness of the earth and so on. I've seen weather balloons with parachuttes that climb to over 25km for under $150. You would need a camera to take a picture every minute or so, and also you will need very good thermoinsulation and something warm like handwarmers because at that altitude the temperature is quite low and the equipment could be dammaged.
I really don't understand why you wouldn't do that, are you affraid you will clearly see that the earth is round? From that altitude you'll get a glimpse of the curvature, you won't see spectacullar round earth views but it would be something. If you're right then... you will have more proof for your studies :)